Analysis of Technology Capabilities

therefore used by the sales people and their support personnel. This will not be analyzed as a communication channel, but it was worth mentioning that at least some interviewees felt like, up to some degree, that it had the properties of a communication channel.

Face-to-Face meetings: These were a common way to communicate in to company both formally and informally. According to the questionnaires, formal meetings reached an average of 4,15 and informal conversations an average of 3,7.

Also, the interviews confirmed that both of these were relatively common in the case company.

From these above mentioned communication technologies, we include all but the sales support system in our analysis of the capabilities they provide for communication. Even though some of the interviewees saw that the support system provided communication properties, we set it apart from the other communication possibilities and therefore exclude it from our analysis.

in the target company, we compare these theories with the experiences of the users and the above technologies that are available in the companies’ media repertoire.

To analyze the communication technologies used in the target company, we adopt the media capabilities introduced in MST. The capabilities that we analyze are: perceived velocity of communication, reprocessability, level of interactivity, rehearsability, parallelism and symbol sets. The perceived velocity of communication is seen in slightly different perspective compared to MST. In this case communication is not only about the pure technology based speed that the technology offers, but also how fast the users envision it to be. Reprocessability is defined in very much the same manner than in the MST. We observe how important is the ability to be able to re-examine the message that is to be sent and which technologies offer this possibility. Documentation is also part of this capability. We see the level of interactivity as an important addition to the capabilities. In our analysis we want to stress how the users of the technologies perceive the interactivity. Rehearsability is seen as the ability to consider what the sender is actually sending. The concept is same as in MST, but we are also trying to understand how much the users actually consider what they are sending. Parallelism is seen as how much different technologies provide the possibility to use several communication channels at the same time. We also studied how much this sort of multitasking happens in the target company. Symbol sets are treated in the same way as in MST. We aim to examine how the sets of symbols of different capabilities are observed and used.

Table 1 Media Capabilities

Velocity of Communication Reprocessability Rehearsability Reachability Parallelism Symbol sets Interactivity

Phone Fast Low Average One-2-One/One-2-Few High Low High

Email Average High High All High High Low

Email on phone Fast High High All Average Average Low

Workroom Average/Slow High High All High High Low

Videoconference Slow Average Average One-2-Few Average Average High

Intranet Slow High High One-2-Many High Average Low

F-2-F Slow/High Low Average One-2-One/One-2-Few Low Low High

IM Fast High Average One-2-One/One-2-Few Average Average Average

SMS Fast High Average All Average Lowq Low

Teleconference Average Average Average One-2-One/One-2-Few Average Average Avearge

The table presented above is constructed from the inherent technology capabilities that the different media used in the target company have. These are not necessarily how these communication technologies actually are used in the target company. The goal of this stage is to compare these estimated capabilities with how the users of these technologies see them. It is not meant to provide the ultimate right picture of what capabilities these technologies have, but rather describe how the users of our target company perceive them. In a way we have unified the positivist approach of the MST and interpret how this fits the real world case. Therefore, we will take the technologies into examination one by one and see how the actual use compares with the capabilities presented in MST. Not all capabilities are fully covered.

Email

Email has become one of the most used communication technologies in today’s organizations. This has been mostly due to its possibility to disperse time and location (Hooff 2005). Velocity of communication is seen as being average, or fast when using the phone email version. This is pretty much confirmed in our research. People tend not to use email when they are in hurry or completing other tasks. The exact time for an answer for email ranges from few hours to maximum of one workday. This also confirms that there exists some individual variance on how people see the perceived velocity.

The expected time for an answer is not only due to the technical capabilities offered, but rather on the individual perceptions of the communication velocity and the organization wide social norms addressing the time it is seemed appropriate to answer an email.

One of the problems with email as a communication media is just here, as one of the interviewees commented: “You can never be sure when your email is responded to”.

On the contrary, one the interviewees claimed that: “At the moment, email seems to be the best way to receive a quick response”. This suggests that the perceived velocity of communication can differ in a significant ways.

The table also suggests high values in reprocessability and rehearsability.

Reprocessability was seen as one of the most important capabilities that email offers.

8/9 interviewees reported that simply because of the possibility to document messages

they use email. One of the interviewees addresses the issue buy telling us that email is a very good archive and that he has over 20 000 email messages stored there. One can argue is this the initial purpose of email, but nevertheless it is a very used capability.

Also 6/9 interviewees expressed that email has the capability of rehearsability. It was defined as the possibility to leave a written message in the background for a while and came back to it later to ensure you are sending what you really want to tell. Email was also seen as a technology that enabled the writer to carefully consider one’s message.

One interviewee explained that: “In only written communication you can be sure about sending exactly the information you desire”.

Email was also seen as the most used channel when a large audience was desired. 7/9 interviewees identified that email had the property of reaching large masses when communicating. Parallelism and interactivity received relatively little comments or support. We interpreted that this lack of interactivity might be because of the trade-offs described by Dennis. According to MST, conveying large amounts of information is best suited with a media low on interactivity (Dennis, Fuller & Valacich 2008). The fact that nobody saw email as being interactive, but instead used it to document and reach large masses would support this notion. A few of the interviewees also mentioned that it is common to write SMS during meetings. Short email responses can be used in a similar fashion. This would indicate that email has some degree of parallelism. Symbol sets were also mentioned by one interviewee, who claimed that email is good for including attachments.

Phone

In our target company mobile phone was a communication tool provided to each employee and it ranked second as the most used communication technology inside the organization. In terms of velocity of communication, it was seen as the fastest way of reaching your audience. 4/9 of the interviewees reported that the phone had the property of being a fast media. It was also seen as an easy way of communicating. As

company-wide tool, some communication that might have been better through other technologies was done through the phone. This was because of the familiarity and the situational reasons that will be discussed later.

The biggest problem with the phone was not always knowing the other partner’s current status. In accordance with the questionnaire, the employees had an mean of 2,33 meetings per day. These took an average of 10,73 hours a week. Depending on the type of meeting the other partner is having, these impose restrictions on the reachability. 3/9 mentioned that the phone is somewhat problematic since you cannot always be sure if the other partner is reachable by phone. Comments such as, “you can’t always answer your phone” and “phone is an excellent device, but you cannot always reach people with it”, were received in the interviews.

Comparing with the most used communication tool, email, there was little responses describing the phone as having the capabilities of reprocessability and rehearsability.

This sounds intuitively correct since calling and talking to somebody on the phone is high in interactivity. As mentioned with email, this also supports the fact that the same technology cannot excel in both being interactive and supporting reprocessability and rehearsability. Therefore, interactivity was reported to be high with mobile phones.

According to one interviewee, “Phone and SMS enable fast feedback and interactivity.”

Phone, seen as a means to communicate one-to-one with another person lacked also the features of parallelism. Nobody mentioned that phone would have the features of parallelism. It is easy to understand that when one is on a direct communication with another person, he/she lacks the option to engage in another communicative action.

Symbol set also was neither mentioned as a capability for a one-to-one communication.

Instant Messaging (IM)

Instant messaging was used in a very variable way, but among the interviewees we managed to gather different types of users. Before the OSC implementation, the instant messaging tool used in the target company was Microsoft Network (MSN). All of the

interviewees were aware that IM exists as a used communication technology inside the company. As mentioned, three of these nine mentioned that they use IM actively, while three mentioned using it never and the last three used it once in a while or only with some people. This is very much in line with the result from the questionnaire, some people use it a lot and some people hardly at all.

When comparing the result with the background information, we can observe that all of the active users were in the back office operations where as all of those not using it were located in a more customer oriented role. We argue that this maybe because of the differences in job descriptions of people inside the BUS unit. All of the three active users of IM where located in jobs that included much project type of work. Project work tends to need more of fast ad hoc communicating, and the interviewees confirmed that IM is a very good communication device when you want a fast response to a question that is easily articulated. In this case, there was no indication that communication toward customer would happen through IM and therefore the value of the technology for sales personnel can be assumed to be lower.

As a communication channel, IM was seen one of the fastest. If the communication partner’s status information (available, away, in the meeting, busy or do not disturb) was up to date, the heavy users saw it as the fastest communication technology available. It was seen as an easy way to ask fast questions. One of the interviewees stated that if he is in need of some specific information, and the one he expects to be able to provide him with an answer is on available on the IM, he uses IM to gain the information. One of the downsides of IM was that, as stated, that it was not used by everybody. This caused reachability problems towards to non-users of IM.

The reprocessability and rehearsability were sparsely mentioned. One reason seemed to be that users actually did not know that IM conversations could be logged and one interviewee mentioned that he/she does not use IM because it does not have the option to document your conversations. In the analysis, documentation seemed to be closely

capabilities that matter, but also how aware the users are of the capabilities and can they use it with each other. Rehearsability was neither seen as a capability strongly supported by IM, this is probably because the actual users of IM described it as being a more interactive channel than the pure technical capabilities imply.

IM was described as an interactive channel by two of the nine interviewees. They both stated that IM also makes it possible to gain fast responses. One of the interviewees stated that IM cannot simply be used in the same way as email. Using email for the same type of conversations as IM would just cause an email flood. This again supports the fact that both reprocessability and reherasability do not match with a channel being highly interactive. We also estimated that there would some parallelism elements in IM, since while being interactive the communication speed is lower than on phone or video.

We had some answers indicating this capability. There were answers indicating the IM could be also used during a meeting or while being on a phone. One of the users said that she uses much IM to communicate with the case company’s other unit. She used it to communicate symbol sets to describe and explain what was discussed in words.

Therefore, we note that the bias of receiving most of the answers from heavy users might indicate the use of IM be more interactive than it is to the average user.

SMS

In general, SMS was probably seen as the fastest way to reach a person. A few interviews explicitly answered that it is faster than IM. This was due to the fact that cell phone was seen as a device that everybody carries along with them and answering to a SMS was seen appropriate in most situations. In the target company, answering a SMS during a meeting was not seen as being rude. Instead, SMS was considered as a technology that was used to confirm something or as seeking for an answer for a short question. But even with a very used media, such as SMS, one interviewee mentioned that he never reads them, only deletes them once a week. This again indicated differences in personal ways of communicating.

SMS is also seen as a written communication media that should, up to some degree, support rehearsability and reprocessability. In the interviews, there were little responses of these two capabilities being offered by SMS, even though the theory supports that these should be available. Only reprocessability came up by a single interviewee. SMS was mentioned to have the capability of reconsidering the message before sending it.

Generally this is true, but it seemed that most SMS answers are done immediately after receiving a one and therefore there is scarcely time to reconsider the message.

We argue that this is because of two reasons. Firstly, answering a message is seen as a fast response and there exists only little time to consider what one is sending.

Therefore, there actually is little time to thoroughly consider one’s response. Secondly, the SMS length is somewhat restricted. This means that there actually exists little communication that should be documented and that the communication is also more informal and there exist less need to re-examine what you are sending. Therefore this is less about the capabilities that are inherently available, but more about how SMS are being used. In the target company, they are used in such a way that users often do not desire the possibility to re-examine, consider or the possibility to later come back to a given SMS.

While in our estimate SMS was not seen as being an especially interactive media, it was used in a more interactive way than its pure capabilities imply. This is because people use it as a very interactive channel, but only on issues that are low on complexity. One of the interviewee described a situation where while being in a presentation, they exchanged messages that discussed very shortly about what was the idea behind the presentation. This also indicates that SMS has the capability of being a parallel channel while being engaged in another task. Symbol sets were neither mentioned. The reason to this could be that in business use SMS are mostly text only communication.

Teleconferences and web conferences

Both teleconferences and web conferences were a common way of communication in our target company. On average, the employees had 2,33 meetings a day and 1,47 of these were other than face-to-face. These two technologies offer basically the same ways of communicating. The main difference is that you can include some of your computers capabilities to a web conference according to the used meeting software.

The usage difference existed mainly on the level that web conferences were used more in internal communication whereas teleconferences were held by sales people for external communication.

The velocity of communication can be analyzed on two levels. The actual communication happens with similar velocity as phone. The difference is that there exists some lag between scheduling a meeting and actually performing the meeting.

The more people are involved, the more scheduling is needed to match different people’s time tables. This makes the communication velocity slower than in a simple phone call. On the other hand, when a meeting is scheduled, it ensures that most of the people needed are available.

In our research, we argue that these technologies would have the capabilities of having some degree of both rehearsability and reprocessability. This is because even though being interactive, it does not mean each member has to be engaged in the conversation at the same time. We argue that the social norms of the society have an effect on this.

When being present there is a strong social pressure, in the name of politeness, to concentrate to the one speaking. This pressure is relaxed when you are not physically present. In our opinion, this results in these communications technologies having some degree of both interactivity and rehearsability and reprocessability. While others are communicating with each other, a single individual has time to observe and think what has been said and in turn what he/she wants to communicate.

These same reasons that move these channels away from being fully interactive provide them with the capability of parallelism. The ability of being not only aware of the

meeting going on, but simultaneously working on another issue on your computer is a straightforward result of the single individuals communication phase being slower.

Symbols sets were a capability that a phone conference did not have, but are increasingly offered by net meeting software. One of today’s software provides possibilities to present power points slides and share your desktop. Documentability was not seen a capability of the technologies. Some interviewees said that memos were kept up to some degree, but no written document was provided for all web conferences and teleconferences. Either way, the capability was external from the communication technology.

Meetings and videoconferences

Formal meetings and videoconferences were seen as rather fast ways of communicating. Formal meetings had the problem of being dependent of location, but once the meetings were held the phase of conversation was quick. Where web - and teleconference had only the time issue to deal with, formal face-to-face meetings have to deal with both time and place when organized. Videoconferences, at the time of the study, where organized through separate rooms designed for them. The problem with this was that in some locations these rooms just did not exists, and that there where too little of these available, so it made scheduling even harder. Some interviewees also mentioned that due to technical problems web- and teleconferences are a more reliable way of meeting up.

Meetings and videoconferences where seen as being the most interactive channel available. Formal meetings where clearly the most interactive, but some heavy users of video conferences claimed that they had become so accustomed to videoconferences that the difference to face to face small. Videoconferences were also stated as the second best in communicating meaning and they had been used for example in training on IT tools. On the other hand, some interviewees claimed that the contact and feedback to other partners is weaker than in a live meeting. In general, the opinion of

In document The impact of communication technologies on individual workers' productivity (sivua 65-78)